The difference was that Rustock was responsible for sending out spam email, whereas Ashley Madison encouraged people to cheat on their spouses. Fusion’s analysis suggests Ashley Madison’s growth is not anything like Facebook’s.

Avid Life Media is offering a $500,000 Canadian dollar reward payment to anyone who provides information that leads to the identification, arrest, and conviction of those responsible for the theft.

The individual also claimed that security at Ashley Madison was incredibly weak, and alleged that because user profiles are not actually deleted when users think they are (among other issues), Ashley Madison is guilty of perpetrating fraud upon its users.

The hackers said they released the data because Avid Life has refused to shut down both Ashley Madison and another site called Established Men.

CNNMoney could not independently confirm the legitimacy of the thousands of military email addresses leaked as part of the hack, but Defense Secretary Ash Carter has said the Pentagon is investigating. Each seeks certification as a class action to represent the 37 million users of the site. But the suits charge that their identities were still revealed when hackers posted 9.7 gigabytes of data stolen from the company last week.

A spokeswoman for Gov. Bruce Rauner has confirmed the administration is looking into reports that a half-dozen state government email accounts have shown up in hackers’ public data dumps from the Ashley Madison website.

The data obtained by the Impact Team has yet to be confirmed as authentic. “Have an affair”. It helps connect people seeking to have extramarital relationships and is owned by ALM.

On the morning of July 12, employees logged into their computers to find a threatening message from the Impact Team, with the song “Thunderstruck” by AC/DC playing.

Officials said there have already been reports of extortion attempts and even suicides linked to the dating site information released by hackers last week.

“Needless to say, this dumping of sensitive personal and financial information is bound to have catastrophic effects on the lives of the website’s users”, one lawsuit from Los Angeles sated as reported by AP.